Excellent Smallie Day!

Hey Gang, I had a super day fishing today! Was wading a stretch of the Zumbro River west of Byron and experienced my best day of wading ever. From 12:30 to about 3:30 I caught well over a dozen smallies. Four of them were in the 15 inch range and I had another four that were easily in the 17 to 18 inch range. I’ve never had a day that good wading in the various streams around Byron and Kasson. I probably could have caught more, but the skies started to get dark, thunder was bumping and I even saw some distant lightening. It was definately time to quit. I have no pictures and no partner to verify my story, but I’m not sharing the specific location either. I don’t know if it was the weather conditions or just the fact that August is just a good time to be hunting smallies. It really doesn’t matter, I had a great day and I hope I can duplicate the fun in the future.

Hey Lew,

Thanks for the report! Any hints on what lures worked or where the smallies tended to be holding?

Good Fishing,
Mike

If you’re not living life on the edge,
you’re probably taking up too much space!

Hey Lew, If I set on the ”edge of my chair” while I type this so I don’t take up tooooooo much space will you tell ME what lure you used and what type of location in the stream/river the fish were in when you caught them?
Thanks, Bill

Well Guys, the lure of choice today was a three inch Berkley Power Tube. Color of choice was pumpkinseed. Had a 1/8 oz tube jig buried within the tube. My starting point was the outside bend of a curve that had dug a nice little trench that was a couple of feet deeper than the inside bend. From that point on I just looked for similar bends. I also found bass to be laying low in just about every hole that was a couple of feet deep or more. I simply cast my tube to the top of the hole and allowed it to pretty much float right through. If I didn’t get immediate response I would try again and give the lure a couple of light pulls. This would give the tube that little gliding action.

By the way, this is the exact same lure I was using up north during the third week in July to catch largemouth bass in 14 to 18 feet of water along weedlines. It’s hard to argue the effectiveness of tube baits. I may never use small tube baits again however. Even the 5 to 9 12 inch bass that a caught had no problem attacking the three inch tube bait.

I’ve got 2 pumpkinseeds (that were really not that big) on a 3″ bass tube and a 2/0 hook on the zumbro this year